YES: The penny sales tax will let the county save money by repairing roads before it’s too late.
By Blair Barnhardt
I have been involved with construction for more than 30 years and have taught civil engineering classes for the past 17 years. It frustrates me to see our Cobb County residents waste time arguing about the SPLOST vote.
If the roof of your half a million-dollar house was leaking, would you call someone to repair it immediately? Of course you would, and such is the case in Cobb with our roads. In fact, 82 percent of the SPLOST funding is dedicated to resurrecting our crumbling roads, preserving our existing infrastructure, parks and facilities.
We need to pass the SPLOST and learn how to repair our roads cost effectively by implementing techniques that other counties and states are using.
Nevada DOT has saved $700 million over the past 20 years by using pavement management, pavement preservation and in-place asphalt recycling. Los Angeles saved $6 million in the first year that it used a $1.2 million asphalt recycling machine to rejuvenate its worn-out pavement. In Georgia, Grady County saved $7.76 million by using in-place recycling on Old State Route 179.
While we all deliberate about whether SPLOST should be passed, our Cobb infrastructure continues to crumble. We worry about saving 13 cents a day by switching light bulbs in our office to more “green” illumination, yet we go ahead and potentially waste hundreds of millions of dollars by worrying about whether we should pass a SPLOST vote to allow Cobb to spend needed funds on repairing our aging infrastructure.
If we don’t vote in favor of the local SPLOST, our roads will crumble beyond the point of a simple repair. In technical terms, roads are in trouble when they have a pavement condition index (PCI) of 54 points or less (where 100 points is new and 0 is impassible).
When this happens, the $1 per square yard of SPLOST funding that we would have spent to preserve our infrastructure with pavement preservation and in-place asphalt recycling will become an $8 to $10 dollar per square yard repair, based on Federal Highway Administration research.
If we vote no to SPLOST, our aging roads will lose 3 PCI points per year, falling from a network average of about 63 to 54 over the next three years. When this happens, the cost to repair the same infrastructure will increase about 60 percent. In other words, the roads that we may have saved, such as Barrett Parkway at about $9 per square yard, will cost upward of $22 per square yard if we delay SPLOST implementation. The project’s duration also will increase four times, causing more traffic delays for residents.
I have traveled from Alaska to California, from Maine to Florida, teaching governments how to save money by using asphalt recycling, pavement preservation and pavement management. Most of them get it. But once Delta brings me back home and I am in my driveway, I continue to be distraught by the fact that we are all wound up over the SPLOST vote.
I say vote yes for SPLOST and hold our politicians and DOT engineers accountable for the rehabilitation of our roads with the most cost-effective, eco-efficient technology available.
Blair Barnhardt, an instructor for the Federal Highway Administration, is a member of Citizens for Cobb’s Future, supporting the SPLOST.
NO: The tax lets governments spend too easily, slowing our recovery.
By Larry Wills
Passage of the 1 percent Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax next Tuesday will result in yet another obstacle to Cobb County’s economic recovery.
Perpetuation of the 20 per-cent sales tax increase has the same consequences as rising gasoline prices. Both make it harder for the middle class to dig out from under the mountain of household and government debt that caused the recession.
Experts agree that the problem with the American economy is that it is bloated with debt. A SPLOST is just another way to create and service government debt.
The SPLOST encourages future debt and tax increases by making it way too easy for governments to acquire nonessential assets that taxpayers will have to maintain going forward. It also encourages deficit government spending.
Local governments can use SPLOST proceeds to pay back money borrowed from their general fund and state loans, as well as general obligation bonds and intergovernmental revenue bonds. This last form of SPLOST financing does not require a voter referendum and was utilized by the city of Marietta to obtain a $9.82 million revenue bond that it purchased from the Downtown Marietta Development Authority (DMDA) in 2007 to “accelerate construction of five SPLOST projects.”
It is pretty obvious by now why this recession, unlike previous ones, knocked the financial legs out from under local and state governments. They have taken on too much debt, assumed too many non-basic government activities and purchased too many nonessential assets.
Another SPLOST will allow elected officials to continue wasting tax revenues and increase the financial burden middle class families and retirees are desperately struggling to reduce by cutting spending and saving money.
Private households have slashed about $1 trillion from outstanding consumer debt since it peaked in the third quarter of 2008. At the same time, local and state governments continue to shovel vast amounts of debt, taxes and exotic fees, fines and penalties back upon their shoulders.
The federal government has started another round of unconventional monetary stimulus that will devalue the money taxpayers are saving, and local and state governments are increasing the use of unconventional revenue collection schemes, such as T-SPLOST, SPLOST, and other weird public/private instruments to get money to feed the government beast.
It is time to take a breath in risky local government spending by voting down another SPLOST.
Larry Wills, a retired environmental designer, lives in Marietta.
